Au cours d'une conversation entre deux amis, l'un complimente l'autre en prononçant les mots « C'est bien, ça ». La conversation devient alors un débat, puis un conflit, en se développant autour de l'interprétation de cette formule, du ton sur lequel elle a été prononcée et de ses connotations plus ou moins cryptées.

Annabelle, 25 ans, aime faire l'amour avec Richard, 50 ans. Ce désir, aussi fort qu'inexplicable ne lui suffit pas. Un soir, elle rencontre Luca, jeune comme elle, avec qui elle espère enfin trouver sa place. Elle partage avec lui les rêves que Richard ne lui a jamais permis: les sentiments, l'illusion d'un amour plus pur. Mais Luca n'a jamais les mots, jamais les gestes qu'il faut. Et puis il y a la ville, comme Richard, qui la prend, la happe, la fascine...

Edouard Binet, an aimless Frenchman, has been travelling in North Africa for many years, and is sailing to Belgium. En route, he meets Sylvie Baron. He introduces her to Nemrod Lobetoum, a rich Egyptian carrying valuable jewelry, and Sylvie and Nemrod become friends. Their friendship escalates to love, which makes Edouard jealous. Days later, Edouard arrives at a rooming house owned by Mme. Louise Baron, Sylvie's mother, wearing blood-stained clothes. It appears that Nemrod was killed on a train after he arrived in France, but Edouard denies any knowledge of what happened. Sylvie suspects that Edouard is responsible for Nemrod's death, but by now her mother has become Edouard's ally.

In August 1952, a family of British tourists is found by the roadside in Haute Provence, brutally murdered. In the ensuing, very public, investigation a local landowner, 75 year old Gaston Dominici, is arrested for the murders, having been denounced by his sons. Under police interrogation, Dominici confesses to have killed the family and it looks certain that he will be charged, tried and sentenced to death. But then the case begins to collapse. The old man retracts his confession and the lack of evidence against him becomes apparent…

In this complex chronicle of the evolution of a provincial family's life, the story follows three generations of at least two neighboring families from the 1890s to the 1970s. In one of many related tales, a man who was engaged to the older daughter of a farmer elopes with the younger one. After many years and the birth of five children, the man leaves his wife and family for the bright lights of the city but continues turning up from time to time, until he is finally taken into the home of one of his sons when he is a quite old man. The complex interactions of the legitimate and illegitimate children of a womanizing miner give rise to yet another set of related stories.